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January 24, 2013

On April 11 2013, at the ACCU 2013 conference in Bristol (UK), a 90 minute “Dynamic C++” tutorial will be presented:

Data from external sources comes in diverse types and brings along the need for datatype conversion. How can a C++ programmer accurately and efficiently transfer data from relational or XML database to JSON or HTML without stumbling over the C++ type checking mechanism? The answer is by using type erasure techniques; session will enumerate, explore and compare the most popular C++ type erasure solutions.

Given the above problem as well as both historical (ANSI C union and void*, MS COM Variant, boost::[variant, any, lexical_cast]) and recent (boost::type_erasure, Facebook folly::dynamic) development trends (including pending boost::any C++ standard proposal), it is obvious that there is a need for a way around the static nature of C++ language. There is also more than one solution to this problem; session will explore the internals of boost::[variant, any, type_erasure], folly::dynamic and Poco::Dynamic. Design, capabilities as well as pros and cons of each solution will be examined. Performance benchmark comparisons will be reviewed as well.

Type safety is an important feature of C++; type erasure is a necessary technique for modern software development. Session examines and compares existing solutions to these important concerns.